Jonathan Horton competes in the high bar during the VISA Championships Wednesday Aug. 18, 2011 at the XCel Energy Center. Horton is the two time defending US Champion. (AP Photo/Star Tribune, Brian Peterson)— AP

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Jonathan Horton competes in the high bar during the VISA Championships Wednesday Aug. 18, 2011 at the XCel Energy Center. Horton is the two time defending US Champion. (AP Photo/Star Tribune, Brian Peterson)
/ AP

ST. PAUL, Minn. 
Danell Leyva keeps this up, and his coach and stepfather, Yin Alvarez, is going to need oxygen.

Leyva edged world bronze medalist Jonathan Horton on Wednesday in the first day of competition at the U.S. gymnastics championships, sending the excitable Alvarez into a veritable frenzy. With 92.5 points, Leyva was more than 2 points ahead of Horton going into Friday night's finals.

"Friday, it's going to be a great meet," said Alvarez, who sways, hops and gives little kicks of his feet during Leyva's routines and celebrates good scores with fist pumps and short sprints around the floor. "Friday night, you're going to see the best meet ever."

Horton, trying to become the first three-time winner since 2004 Olympic champion Paul Hamm, finished with 90.4 points after falling of pommel horse and backpedaling several steps on his vault landing.

"It drives me," Horton said. "I know if I really hit my routines, I would score what he scored tonight or better."

Steve Legendre was third with 89.4 points and three-time U.S. junior champ John Orozco had 89.2 after a strange mistake on pommel horse. The P.A. announcer mixed up the competitors and announced Orozco's name when he was already in the middle of his pommel horse routine. A few seconds later, Orozco fell off.

Leyva has been gunning for the top U.S. spot for a while now. In fact, when Hamm returned for the 2008 nationals, Alvarez said all Leyva could talk about was beating the only U.S. man to win the world and Olympic titles. Never mind that Leyva was all of 16 then, and was competing at his first nationals as a senior.

So it's no surprise that finishing second to Horton last year has been driving him.

"So much. Sooo much," Leyva said. "Especially with Jon."

The two are good friends, but Horton can trash talk with the best of them and he's reminded Leyva about last year's results a time or two. But for the next two days, the bragging rights belong to Leyva.

He finished with the top scores on both high bar and parallel bars, and that 16.9 on high bar was the highest score of the night. Both routines were jam-packed with difficulty, but Leyva did them with such ease and fluidity they looked like child's play. While other gymnasts can't help but scrape their toes on the floor on parallel bars, Leyva was smooth as he moving from one skill under the bar to another. When he flipped from one handstand above the bars into another, he came to a dead stop, not swaying or wobbling a bit.

But it was high bar that brought down the house - and prompted a show of his own by Alvarez.

Leyva did four release moves, launching himself so high into the air the folks in the first few rows had to look up to see them, then easily grabbed the bar on his way back down. There was no hesitation, no cover-your-eyes fear he was going to crash. When he was upright in a handstand, he did a little hop, prompting a loud "Oooh!" from the crowd.

When Leyva finished, a huge grin spread across his face. Alvarez screamed, pumped his fists a few times and then swept a low bow to his stepson. When Leyva's score was posted, Alvarez danced around on the floor, screaming.

Leyva's score included bonus points awarded by USA Gymnastics to encourage the men to beef up with their routines. But even without those bonus points, Leyva said it would still have been in the 16s - a score few others in the world can match.

And, he said, that's not even the best he can do the routine.

"Cleanliness," Leyva said. "Just hitting the little details."

Long the best American, Horton has established himself as one of the top guys in the world, too. His bronze at last year's world championships was the first all-around medal for an American since Hamm won the title in 2003 and only the second in the last three decades, and he won his third American Cup title in March. Last month he helped the U.S. to a second-place finish at the Japan, beating reigning Olympic and world champion China.

But he's been inconsistent this year - he was second-to-last at a World Cup meet in Glasgow, Scotland, and 11th in the all-around in Japan - and said he felt he'd lost his competitive fire a bit.

Not anymore.

Horton's high bar routine is also like a circus show, with four release moves of his own. Each time he flipped himself high above the bar, coming back down to grab it as easily as if he was getting something off a shelf. When his feet hit the mat with a solid thud, he slapped his hands and let out a roar.

"That's what I'm talking about!" he yelled as he walked off the podium.

But pommel horse has always been Horton's nemesis - he'd have another world medal and maybe an Olympic one, too, if he could stay on it - and it was no different Wednesday night. Plodding along, he got stuck at one end of the horse and had to drop off. His score of 12.7 was well below his other events, and dropped him almost 4 points behind Leyva with two events left.

Horton picked up some ground on his next event, still rings - impressive considering he watered down his routine by three-tenths to protest a sore shoulder. Horton held his positions for what seemed like forever, the only sign of exertion his bulging veins and the deepening red color in his face. He took a slight step back on his dismount, but he smiled as he climbed off the podium and blew out his breath.

He did a new vault that will pad his point total, but he had too much energy on the landing and had to take several steps backward to keep himself from falling.

"I need to perform better," Horton said. "Yeah, I only missed one routine technically. But I'm a perfectionist and I'm not happy with how I performed."

Still, he was encouraged at the overall level of performances.

Nationals is typically a tense meet filled with major errors. But the Americans have been talking the last few years about challenging for the gold medal in London, and they showed they might have the goods to back up their big talk. It's a tall order, but they displayed the kind of polish and tough tricks they'll need if they're going to have any chance of making a run at the Japanese and Chinese.